I stood, stiffly staring. There is nothing to prepare you for death—no matter how many times one witnesses it. The world doesn't matter; your feet, your hands, your ears and eyes all fall in one swift movement. As your life not only flips upside down but inside out and back again, your left feeling like a used dishtowel left to crinkle and dry in the midday sun.
"Zoey! What have you done?" The voice cried above me.
I blinked but no words found their frame.
"Zo, please!"
This time my fingers twitched.
Sobs entreated.
I woke up in a bed. Not my bed in the House of Night, an unfamiliar one, with plush pillows and silky sheets….
"Glad to see your punk ass stirring. You've been asleep for days." Aphrodite punctuated her sentence with a sneer.
I blinked at her sun-surrounded face. "What the hell? Where am I?"
"My house," She paused tossing a wrapper over her shoulder and into a trash bin. "Correction, my pool house."
I didn't reply with a question before she continued.
"Apparently you got into some deep shit." She wiped the crumbs from her lap and reached for another breakfast bar. "Here, you haven't eaten, I'm sure your hungry."
I stared at her outstretched hand clasping a multigrain bar. "I'm sorry, that doesn't really tell me anything. Why am I here?"
She hesitated before finding my fingers and placing the bar into my palm. "Do you not remember last night?"
I shook my head.
Her eyes bore into my brain as if wishing to open my head and sift out my thoughts dish out my lies and truths and compare them to my life.
"Stop staring at me and spit it out. What the hell happened to me last night?"
"You messed up Z. Real, real," She took a breath, "real bad."